benefits will end december 29th if congress does not contact on the fiscal cliff. and according to the national employment law project, another one million jobless americans will also exhaust their state benefits early next year. karen duckett is just one of the folks who will be affected. she survived breast cancer, yet doesn't know how she and her grandson will make ends meet once their benefits run out. the checks keep a roof over our head. i can't even imagine what we're going to do without that check. the cbo, the congressional budget office, says extending benefits another year will cost $30 billion, a small price tag when you consider other costs like extending tax cuts for millionaires. i'm joined tonight by john nichols, washington correspondent of "the nation" magazine. john, great to have you with us. you know, we focus on the deal, you know, who is going to get the tax break, where is the spending cuts, where are they going to come from. but in the backdrop of all of this, millions of americans have no security this christmas. they don't know whether th